Crystal Clean (30 page)

The best thing that happened at the Walker Center was that we began to work, as a family, on being honest and talking with one another. That’s been hard, especially for my parents, but I’m so proud of them for trying. I love them so much, and I’m eternally grateful for them. I don’t think I’d be sober without them. Not only did they make it possible for me to go to rehab where, at the very
least, I had my first taste of sobriety, but they also took care of my son when I couldn’t even take care of myself.

They gave Andy and me a safe place to stay, and the support I needed when I was falling apart. None of this was easy for them. They really were disgusted, not so much with me, but by the very thought of meth and what I’d done to myself. Somehow, though, they were able to put that aside and just love me while I tried to learn how to love myself. We have a better relationship than ever. It’s a far cry from perfect, but as they say in A.A., “progress over perfection.”

The best part about being sober is that I’m fully present for Andy. I’m so proud of the person he is, and I know how fortunate I am to be his mother.

We moved into an apartment in March of 2008 and we’re still here. Andy rules over his kingdom from the window of his second story bedroom, playing his harmonica and shouting quotes from his movies to anyone passing by. Sometimes, just to the empty parking lot. He doesn’t care. I think he figures that somewhere, someone might be listening, and it’s his duty to share his talents with the world. We live a simple life and we’re dirt poor, but we have each other and that’s all I’ve ever really wanted. We’re happy.

I still go to therapy and see my psych nurse. I’m still working on loving myself and forgiving myself for my past. I often wish I could be done with it, but I’ll never be done with it. I’m a work in progress.

Epilogue

I’ve been working on this book for a few of years. Being a writer is a dream I’ve always had, but it was akin to wishing to be a movie star
-
something nice to think about, but too out of reach for the average mortal. I’ve been lucky enough to have the time to work on it, though. It’s difficult finding employment when you’re a felon.

Julie didn’t want me to work for the first few months. She wanted me to focus on my recovery instead. Since then, I’ve had a couple of jobs, the most recent I lost because
of my drug charge. I dro
ve for a van service
once in a while
, but when my unemployment ran out, I got scared.

Every employer these days asks about criminal history and most do background checks. In the rare cases when I got an interview or call back, the result was always the same. No thanks.

So in December of 2010, with five dollars to my name and bills to pay, it just popped into my head that maybe I could make and sell fudge, because I happen to make the best fudge on earth. I posted on Face Book what I was doing and ended up selling 39 pounds of fudge that month. That got me through December but, of course, the bills keep on coming. So I stated making other things and sharing the pictures with my friends.

Then someone hired me to do a Super Bowl party - just a little light catering. Then someone wanted to know if I could do a birthday cake for her son. I'd never done a "real" cake before but I needed the money so I casually said yes while frantically searching the Internet for blogs and tutorials about cake decorating. I really liked the creativity of cake decorating and was surprised at how well it turned out.

On February 13, 2011, I celebrated four years of sobriety. My son, Andy, was turning 19 and kept telling me he was getting married. He watches a lot of movies and
Mama Mia
was one of his many obsessions as is
The Sound of Music
. He told me he was going to marry Maria in a church and have seven children, but that Captain VonTrapp could live with them, which I think is very generous of Andy considering he'd be breaking up the family.

Just before his birthday, I asked him what kind of cake he wanted. He kept saying, “Mamma Mia, Mamma Mia,” until I got so frustrated, I did a Google search for cake images and we looked at
them together. I’d only scrolled down a little when he made me stop and pointed to the one he wanted. “That one.”

“Honey, that’s not a birthday cake. That’s a wedding cake.”

“Oh, yeah. Essa Mamma Mia. Inna get married. Enna Sophie.”

He kissed me on the check and left the room. He’d made his decision. It was my fault. I was the one who gave him a choice.

So I ended up making him a two-tiered wedding cake complete with white chocolate flowers and leaves. The bottom tier was chocolate fudge with Oreo butter cream filling and the top was white with raspberry filling - just like a real wedding cake. I figured, why not do this for him? As much as I refuse to limit my son's future, the reality is that he's never going to get married, so if he wanted a wedding cake for his birthday...I'd do anything for my son. Andy was beside himself. I posted pictures of the whole ordeal online and people were very responsive. I got more orders here and there for cakes.

The chocolate flowers really caught my interest and I began researching more about working with chocolate as edible art. This led me to chocolate stilettos. Life size, 3-D chocolate stilettos. Now
those
were fun to make and the sky's the limit as far as design. I could do very plain or fabulously funky.

I was fascinated by chocolate and spent hours studying and experimenting. I started getting sales within a couple of days for candy barks and hand dipped chocolates. Then I got an Easter order for three stilettos from a woman who
 
wanted to give them to her daughters as baskets. When they arrived in Texas, one of the shoes was nothing but a puddle of chocolate.

Shipping chocolate would require ice packs and insulation which would result in higher costs. I was back to square one, except that I still had local orders trickling in. One day I was just sitting at my desk doing nothing when out of the blue I thought, "I wonder how those professional companies make those really cute cookies?"

Again, I started reading blogs, looking a
t thousands of pictures and You
Tube tutorials, and again I started experimenting and sharing pictures. Today I work for myself at my own company, Kimbo’s Cookies, making custom designed sugar cookies.

During the time I’ve worked on this book, Andy’s become quite a writer himself. He makes what he calls his lists, which are actually endless pages in a notebook filled with his writing. At first, he was copying words out of magazines, but he quickly grew bored
with that. Lately, he’ll pop in a DVD with the sub-titles on, press “pause,” and copy down the words on the screen
-
complete with cues.

“Luke,”
mechanical breathing,
“I am your father.”

Every few paragraphs or so, he comes to me and has me read aloud what he’s written. The problem is that in the past few weeks, he’s started turning on the foreign language sub-titles. The Spanish I can work through phonetically. When it comes to French or Italian, I just fake it.

Lately, he’s been watching
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
, which makes for very interesting “lists” indeed.

These days, I bake and I write. I sit upstairs in my little writing room every day, looking out on the commons and the playground, and most days I think of how lucky I am to have made it through those years and come out the other side largely intact.

When I work on this book, I write until the memories are too painful, then I bake until the pain passes and I can move on. My days are quiet. Andy still has long days with school and therapy, so from seven in the morning until shortly after six, it’s just me.

I’m actually pretty good company.

It’s Friday, and the playground is full of children. I write sporadically because
the flippers are out
. That’s what I call this group of little boys who seem to defy gravity. They flip everywhere: Off the playground equipment, off the sides of trees, off the ground and out of each other’s hands. Over and over again, they spend close to an hour flipping. I watch this little flip-clique and try to imagine Andy as one of them. Sometimes I wonder what he would be like if he didn’t have Down syndrome. I think he’d be pretty much the same, but easier to understand. I think he’d make a fantastic flipper.

He’ll be home soon, so I go downstairs to pre-heat the oven for his little pizzas. I take a bag of frozen peas and pour some into a pan, and as I shut the freezer door, I hear the best sound in the world: “Oh hi, Mom. It’s me. I’m home.”

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my editors Paula Berinstein and Eliza Dreier for making this book better and helping me become a stronger writer. Thank you to Jeff Yeager, my mentor.
Thank you, Brad Peachey (the only man I know who can rock a bow tie five days a week) for your critical eye.
Thank you to all the writers and artists who’ve shared their own struggle and in doing so inspired me to keep going. Thank you to all my friends who’ve been so supportive throughout my journey. Thank you
so much,
Mom and Dad
,
for always being there for me and not giving up on me. Most of all, thank you to my bug-in-a-boy-suit, my perfect person and the best human I’ve ever known: Andy. Being your mom is the best thing I’ve ever done or will ever do. I love you, sweetheart.